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An Architectural Love Affair: Dutch Modernists and the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright

Wim de Wit, Adjunct Curator at the Cantor Art Museum, Stanford University and Consulting Curator, Getty Research Institute

Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture was already well known in The Netherlands by the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century. In 1911, the "father" of Dutch architectural modernism, the architect Hendrik P. Berlage, made a visit to the United States and, accompanied by American architect William Gray Purcell, toured the east coast and Midwest specifically to see the work of not only Louis H Sullivan and H.H. Richardson, but especially that of Frank Lloyd Wright. After his return Berlage went on a lecture tour in Holland and Germany and spoke with great admiration about Wright's work. This was the beginning of a close relationship between the American architect and his Dutch colleagues--both the expressionists of the Amsterdam School and the rationalists of the De Stijl movement. This lecture examines these mutually beneficial interactions between America and The Netherlands.

Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century. The program is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.